





COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 









/ 




MAN and HIS CUSTOMS 


UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME 


HOW THE WORLD GREW UP 

The Story of Anthropology 

RACES OF MEN 

The Story of Ethnology 

HOW THE WORLD SUPPORTS MAN 

The Story of Human Geography 

MAN AND HIS RECORDS 

The Story of Writing 

THE TONGUES OF MAN 

The Story of Languages 

HOW THE WORLD IS RULED 

The Story of Government 

MAN AND HIS RICHES 

The Story of Economics 

THIS MAN-MADE WORLD 

The Story of Inventions 

HOW THE WORLD LIVES 

The Story of Sociology 


Thomas S. Rockwell Company 
Publishers 
CHICAGO 








Publishers Note 


This book presents in popular form the 
present state of science. It has been reviewed 
by a specialist in this field of knowledge. An 
excerpt from his review follows: 


“In my opinion this little volume does 
in a remarkably fascinating way what 
some of us have long felt needed to be 
done but have been unable to do our¬ 
selves, namely, to present to young people 
in simple, straightforward form the prin¬ 
cipal facts about the social world in which 
we live and the customs and heritages 
upon which it rests ” 


Signed: Louis Wirth, 

Department of Sociology, 
The University of Chicago. 







Through the years customs have changed as much 
as man and mans way of living 






































MAN and HIS CUSTOMS 


THOMAS 


By 

Margaret Fry 

Ii 


Drawings by 
Frank J. Forstneger 



S. ROCKWELL COMPANY 


CHICAGO 




Copyright, 1931, by 

THOMAS S. ROCKWELL CO. 

CHICAGO 


Printed in United States of America 


AUG -3 1931 

©cn 405«6 




CONTENTS 


I What Is Custom? 11 

Are customs important? What are some common 
customs? How did customs begin? Who started 
the customs? How did new customs start? How 
did customs change? How can a custom become 
a law? What happens if customs are broken? 

Do all customs seem natural? Are our customs 
better than those of other people? 

II The Custom of Owning Things 23 

Does everyone own things? What were the first 
things owned? What things are prized most? 

Was money used in trading? What kinds of money 
have been used? Why is money a help in buying 
and selling? What are weights and measures? 

III The Custom of Work 3 5 

Is work a custom? Are customs of work alike 
the world over? Is work a good custom? How 
was work made easier? Have inventions changed 
customs? How does business affect us? What is 
the real purpose of work? 

IV The Custom of Fashion 47 

What are fashions? Are there more than one kind 
of fashions? Are there fashions in feet? Can 
faces be fashionable? Do fashions in hair change? 

Do these fashions affect our lives? Are there fash¬ 
ions in disease? What is important about fashions? 

V The Custom of Etiquette 58 

What is etiquette? How is it learned? Can rude¬ 
ness be politeness? Do people kiss in all countries? 

Do politeness habits change? Are there rules for 
meeting people? Why do men walk nearest the 
street? What custom is changing now? Are all 
customs changing? 


VI The Custom of Play 70 

Why do we play? How did play start? What 
are teams? What is the most popular game? 
Where is cricket played? Where did golf start? 

How is hockey played? Is dancing a kind of 
play? Why did Indians dance? Why do the 
Chinese dance? What was the May-dance? Are 
dances popular now? How did music begin? 

What were the first instruments? What is chess? 

What are dominoes? Where were playing cards 
invented? Is the theater a new amusement? 

What is an opera? 

VII Some Bad Customs 90 

Are all customs good? What bad customs are 
there? What were the pyramids? What is a 
taboo? What are food taboos? What is caste? 

Was slavery a custom? Can sports be cruel? 

What is bullfighting? 

VIII Our Own Customs Are Important 99 

How old are customs? Why do customs last? 

Why do people stay together? Why did people 
follow the customs? Do customs make life harder? 

How are most things learned at first? What do 
we learn from others? What happens when our 
customs are not followed? Can we keep from 
learning customs? How do customs make life 
easy? Would life be safe without customs? Can 
we change bad customs? Are there more good 
than bad customs? 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


Through the years customs have changed (frontispiece) 

Soon everyone was wearing beads 14 

They told their children about it 17 

The government ta\es charge of punishing 21 

People came to the man who made good axes 27 

A yard was the distance from his nose to his thumb 32 

The men were in great danger, for beasts were strong 37 
Spinning could then be done by machine 40 

The people thought the first auto was a jo\e 41 

Traveling was different a few years ago 45 

In Lincoln s time fashionable ladies wore hoop s\irts 53 
They leave their shoes outside 62 

Etiquette often changes with fashion s orders 66 

The players have to use their heads 73 

The Indians had bear and buffalo dances 81 

Chess requires a great deal of s\ill 84 

All the time and effort was wasted 92 

They wanted to belong to the crowd 101 

Most boys want to grow up to be the same as their 
fathers 105 

There are important lessons not in boo\s 107 











Chapter I 


WHAT IS A CUSTOM? 

A MAN who has made a study of human 
customs tells us that if people suddenly 
forgot all the knowledge and habits they had 
learned, their minds would still be just as good 
as ever. But all would be so helpless that in 
one month nine-tenths of them would die, and 
in six months practically all that were left would 
be dead. 

We simply could not learn over again fast 
enough all the inventions and customs that 
now make life so easy and pleasant for us. We 
should die of cold or starvation before we had 
time to find out how to do the countless things 
that today we seldom think of because they 
have become so natural to us. 

When you got up this morning you dressed, 
you washed your face and hands, and you 


Are customs 
important? 


11 


12 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


What are some 

common 

customs? 


brushed your teeth. Then you sat down at 
a table and ate your breakfast. Your food was 
placed before you in different kinds of dishes, 
and in eating the meal you used a knife, a fork, 
and a spoon. And later in the day you did all 
sorts of things in ways that have become habits. 

But did you stop to think why you acted 
like that? Why did you take the time and 
trouble to see that your hands were clean 
before eating? Why did you sit, instead of 
stand, to eat? Why did you use a fork instead 
of your fingers? Why do you dress in certain 
kinds of clothes—shoes that lace, stockings that 
pull on around the legs, shirts that button? 

If we stop to think about it we will find 
that every day of our lives all of us do many 
things without knowing exactly why. Why do 
we do these things? There must be a reason. 

The answer is this: we do these things be¬ 
cause everyone else does them. We do them 
because they make living easier and pleasanter. 
We do them without thinking because when 
we were very young we learned to do them 


WHAT IS CUSTOM? 


13 


from our parents, neighbors, and friends. In 
other words, we do such things because it is 
the custom to do them. And every people 
believes that its ways of doing things are the 
right and best ways. 

Custom, then, must be a strange and power¬ 
ful thing to make thousands, even millions of 
people do the same things every day without 
even wondering whether or not they are the 
right things to do. 

Long ago when there were only a few peo¬ 
ple on earth they probably did not wash their 
hands and faces before breakfast. We are 
sure they did not brush their teeth. The only 
clothes some of them wore were strings of 
beads, made from shells or stones, around their 
waists. Others, who lived in a colder climate, 
wore the skins of wild beasts which they had 
killed. Those who wore the beads knew that 
beads were the right kind of clothes to wear be¬ 
cause the important people they knew wore 
them. It was the custom. And those who wore 
wild animal skins felt the same way. In their 


How did 
customs begin? 


14 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


Who started 
the customs? 



family and in their tribe it was customary to 
wear animal skins. It was the right thing to 
do, then, because it was the custom. 

Somebody had to start these customs, of 
course. There is no way to tell exactly who 
started them and exactly how they were 
started. We can only guess at their beginning. 

At first in the warmer places people prob¬ 
ably wore no clothes at all. Then one day 
some man or woman picked up an unusual 
stone or shell. It might have been a queer 
shape, or a pretty color. This stone was dif¬ 
ferent enough from other stones to make the 
finder want to keep it. 

Probably because it would be easier to keep 
if it were tied to something, the stone was then 
tied to a piece of tough grass or vine, or a 
tough root. And then, because the earliest 
people had no houses and no safe place to keep 
things, the man with the fancy stone tied it 
around his wrist, or his neck, or his waist. 

Perhaps he found several other pretty stones 
tied them with the first. Then someone 


Soon everyone was 
wearing heads 





WHAT IS CUSTOM? 


15 


in his family or tribe noticed the new deco¬ 
ration, liked it, found another pretty stone and 
tied it to a vine, and wore it. 

Soon everyone in the family and in the 
tribe was wearing beads made of shells and 
stones. By this time it was a custom to wear 
them. Anyone who did not have on his beads 
would have felt undressed. He would have 
been a little worried because he was not like 
all the rest. 

When the first clumsy tools were made, 
when the first animal was killed, when the 
first fire was built, when the first food was 
cooked, when the first house was made— 
every one of these things started new customs. 
All of these things were very important to the 
people who had just learned about them. Here 
was a new idea, or a new way of doing things 
that was better than the old. 

Man’s first weapon was probably a clumsy 
club, a limb that he had torn from a tree. 
With this he could protect himself and kill 
some animals for food. But think how much 


How did new 
customs start? 


16 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


How did 
customs change? 


better off he was when he thought of sharp¬ 
ening a hard, flinty rock, and fastening it to 
the end of his club. 

Using a club for protection and for hunting 
was a custom. When a man made an ax of the 
club by fastening a rock to one end, he was 
changing an old custom to a new one. The 
new ax, he found, was much better than 
the old club. So he told his father, and his 
brothers, and the other members of the tribe. 
Soon they were all turning their clubs into 
axes. They all found that killing animals was 
easier with the new weapon. After that they 
always used axes. Hunting with stone axes 
had become a custom. 

So it was with building fires, and cooking 
foods, and building shelters. Someone dis¬ 
covered something new or a new way to do 
things. Probably he hadn’t been thinking 
about it. It is more likely that these new ideas 
were discovered by accident or were learned 
from neighboring tribes who had made the 
discovery in some way. 


WHAT IS CUSTOM? 


17 


Once the new way of doing things was 
found, the other members of the group 
imitated it if they found it good. After that How 
they told their children about it. The chil- they 
dren grew up doing things in the way they 
had been told. They told their children, who 
told their children. And these last children 
followed a custom that was started long be¬ 
fore they were born. Probably it was years 
and years before someone else found a new 
and better way of doing the same thing, or 
before the old custom was changed to a new. 


So while we can only guess at the actual 
beginning of all the customs of the first people 
on earth, we can be sure of the way these 
customs were learned and remembered. The 
younger members of the family, and the 
younger members of the group or tribe, de¬ 
pended on the older ones to tell them how to 
do things. 

The older men and women had had more 
experience. They knew and remembered 
things that had been told them by their own 


T hey told their 
children about it 



18 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


Is respect 
a custom? 


Are laws 
customs? 


parents. Thus it was always the older ones 
who were respected and their ways followed. 

The little boy looked up to and admired his 
father. When he played games he probably 
pretended he was hunting and killing wild 
animals, just like his father. The little girl 
admired her mother, and watched her so that 
she might learn to cook food and to string beads. 

The father and mother in turn respected the 
grandfathers and grandmothers of the family 
and the tribe. This made another custom. For 
it is as customary today as it was in the first 
few thousand years on earth, to respect those 
who are older than we are. It is a custom to 
respect and love those who teach us the cus¬ 
toms we must learn. 

Some customs do not always stay just cus¬ 
toms. Some of them grow into laws. Even 
the earliest people had customs that were 
almost laws, or that became laws. They were 
not written as our laws of today are, but one 
was punished if one did not obey them. 

A member of a tribe, if he wanted a wife, 


WHAT IS CUSTOM? 


19 


might capture any girl or woman he wanted 
and keep her as long as he could. He may 
have had to use his club to get her to go with 
him or stay with him. If he were stronger than 
she, then he succeeded in keeping her. 

If the girl’s family and her own tribe did 
not like to have her dragged off to live with 
another tribe they made war upon the man 
and his tribe to get her back. 

Finally some of the tribes decided that it 
would save life and bloodshed if the men 
picked their wives from certain other tribes 
who would agree not to fight about the mat¬ 
ter. Or a man might purchase his wife. Thus 
we have a custom that grows into a rule, or 
law. A man might capture a wife from certain 
tribes and be sure there would be no war. If 
he was daring or reckless enough to capture 
a woman from one of the tribes outside the 
agreement, then his own fellow tribesmen were 
not bound to help him if his wife’s family and 
tribe sought revenge. He would have to take 
the punishment himself. 


How can a 
custom 

become a law? 


20 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


What happens if 
customs are 
bro\en? 


Today we have marriage laws. These laws 
say that men and women cannot be married 
until they are of a certain age. One must have 
a license to be married. The marriage may 
be performed only by ministers or priests or 
certain officers of the law. After the marriage 
is performed it must be recorded in the books 
kept by the government for that use. 

This seems a long way from the time when 
a man got a wife simply by capturing her or 
buying her. But our marriage laws have really 
grown very slowly from the first rules about 
picking out a wife. 

As long as people have the same customs, 
these customs are enough to keep others from 
doing wrong. And when someone does some 
injury to another, an injury which is against 
the customs, those who are offended or the 
whole group punish the offender. 

This custom has grown into a law which 
protects us all. It is against the law to kill 
another person. But when someone does kill 
another, the dead person’s family is not re- 


WHAT IS CUSTOM? 


21 


sponsible for punishing the offender. The gov¬ 
ernment takes charge, finds out who did the 
killing, and punishes the person who did it. No 
one need punish the wrongs done him when 
there are laws and governments to do it for him. 

Most of the customs of early people seem 
very strange to us. Even the customs of other 
people living today seem queer. In France or 
Holland or Germany people eat food tha* is 
not quite like ours. In India and Japan and 
China the food and customs of eating it seem 
even stranger to us. We think the styles of 
clothing in other countries are funny and 
uncomfortable compared to our own. We 
think them interesting but amusing. And we 
think them amusing because all of us think 
that our own customs in dress and food and 
conduct are just a little better than those of 
the Japanese, the Chinese, or the Hindu. 

The strange part about this is that the 
Japanese, the Chinese, and the Hindu think 
exactly the same way about each other and 
about us. Each one believes that his own 


The government ta\es charge 
of punishing 


Do all customs 
seem natural? 





















22 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


Are our customs 
better than those 
of other peoples? 


customs are the best ones. And they are. 
That is to say, they are the best for him. 

Every tribe of people, every little group of 
farmers, every little town and settlement, 
every country—all developed their own ways 
of doing things. And after a time, when this 
way of doing things became common to all, it 
became a custom. 

So it is that the customs we have, no matter 
how different they are from those in other 
parts of the earth, are good customs for us, 
because our kind of people made them, and 
they are the best we know, although some day 
we may find better ones. 


Chapter II 


THE CUSTOM OF OWNING THINGS 

E VERYONE has certain things that are his 
very own. Even tiny babies soon get 
the idea that certain toys are theirs and will 
cry if someone else, even another baby, picks 
them up. All of us have clothes that were 
bought or made especially for us. Most of 
us have books that are our own. We call 
these things possessions or property. And 
whether we have worked to earn them or 
whether they have been given to us, we like 
the feeling that we own them. 

It seems strange that there was a time on 
earth when people did not own anything. Of 
course this was at the very beginning. People 
had no clothing to own because they did not 
wear any. They had no houses to live in and 
own; they slept at night in trees. It is likely 


Does everyone 
own things? 


23 


24 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


What were the 
first things 
owned? 


they didn’t very often sleep in the same tree, 
so that they never got the feeling that a par¬ 
ticular limb in a certain tree was their own. 
Probably the tribe owned everything at first. 

Having no homes, of course, when they 
first got the idea of owning a thing, the thing 
had to be something they could carry with 
them. It is probable that the clubs men 
used for protection were the first things 
that were owned. Pretty or unusual shells or 
stones were probably owned about the same 
time. The stone or shell was small and 
could be carried easily, especially if tied to a 
vine or root. Probably the finder of the stone 
or shell thought there was magic in it, be¬ 
cause it was different from the others he had 
seen. After he had carried it for a while and 
it had been admired by others in the tribe, then 
he was sure there was magic in it. 

By this time he liked it more than ever. 
He knew it was something worth having 
because other people had admired it. He was 
beginning to get the feeling of ownership, 


THE CUSTOM OF OWNING THINGS 2S 


and it would take a great deal to part him 
from that stone or shell. 

As the world grew a little older and the 
first people grew more thoughtful, they began 
to see magic and spirits in many such objects— 
feathers, tufts of fur, bones, animal teeth. As 
soon as people thought these things had magic 
in them they became very valuable things to 
own. Everybody wanted them because they 
would keep the evil spirits away. Evil spirits, 
they thought, were what made people sick. 
They were also supposed to chase the animals 
away, so that the hunting was bad, and to 
keep fish from being caught. 

Most of the little objects were worn as 
ornaments. That way the owners were less 
likely to lose them, and when wearing them 
they would be guarded all the time from the 
evil spirits. 

When people began making tools, stone 
axes, fish hooks, and arrow heads, these all 
became valuable as property, too. There was 
so little to work with that it took days or 


How did 
magic start? 


26 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


What things 
are prized 
most? 


weeks to shape a stone for an ax.. After a 
man had spent that much time making one 
tool he was naturally careful to keep it in his 
possession. It was only natural for him to 
feel that probably his ax was better than others, 
too, after he had put so many hours and such 
hard work into the making of it. 

Even today we find that we are very care¬ 
ful of some of the things we own. Some boys 
have pocket knives which they would not 
trade for anything. Carpenters and other 
workmen have some tools that they like very 
much, and which seem to do better work 
for them than others do. A woman who 
does a lot of sewing will probably like one 
pair of scissors better than any other because 
they seem to cut better. These feelings, the 
same today as when the world was very young, 
make tools valuable to the people who own 
and use them. 

Sometimes one man could make better ax 
heads than another. Since having a good 
ax made it possible to kill more animals, and 



People came to the man who made good axes and 
offered things in exchange 


27 







































28 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


How did 
trading begin? 


to chop off more tree branches for fires, the 
maker of axes would become an important 
man in the group. Others would come 
to him to ask for one of his axes. We can 
imagine how they bargained in their queer 
talk that was mostly grunts and gestures. 

“I need one of your axes.” 

“But I need them too. I spent many hours 
on them. Make your own axes.” 

“But your axes are better than mine. Look, 
I have brought all these fishhooks. See how 
well they are made. I caught many fish 
with them yesterday. I will give you two of 
these for the ax you have in your hand.” 

“No. It took me much longer to make this 
ax than it took you to make those fishhooks.” 

“Three fishhooks then for the ax.” 

“Not enough. But if you will give me the 
feather and shell you wear, along with the 
fishhooks, you may have the ax.” 

Probably they were not able to strike a 
bargain that day. The man with the fish¬ 
hooks was very proud of the feather and 


THE CUSTOM OF OWNING THINGS 29 

shell. Had they not kept him well and strong? 

And had he not killed a great animal soon 
after he started wearing them? 

In the end if he decided he wanted the 
line ax more than the magic feather and shell, 
there would be a trade. Probably the first trade 
was between neighboring tribes because one 
tribe had things which the other needed and 
could not make. 

This is how buying and selling property Was money 
started. For thousands of years after people used in tradin z ? 
started trading there was no money as we 
know it today. People sold things and bought 
things, but they did it by barter or trade. This 
means that they exchanged some property 
they owned for something they wanted. 

Naturally, this led to the use of some very 
curious things for money. The Greenland 
Eskimos laughed at gold and silver coin when 
they were first offered it in exchange for 
animal skins. They would rather have had 
steel, which was more useful to them. 

Some people have used salt for money. 


30 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


What \inds 
of money have 
been used? 


Others have used cloth, beads, tobacco, or 
coffee. One tribe of people used fishhooks, 
because fishhooks were their most important 
tool. Stones, shells, cattle, pigs have all been 
used to buy other things. Pieces of metal, furs, 
slaves, sugar, whale teeth, iron spades, brass 
wires, cakes of beeswax have all been used, 
too. In some parts of the earth many of these 
things are still used. And there are still many 
places in this country where farmers bring 
their butter and eggs to the store in town and 
trade them for coffee, sugar, tea, other things 
to eat and drink, and clothes to wear. 

All of us have pasted a postage stamp on a 
letter. But did you ever stop to think that 
the postage stamp is a kind of money? People 
used to have to pay actual money for the 
postage due on a letter when it was delivered 
to them. Now we paste a little stamp on 
our letter and it is taken wherever we want 
it to go, by train or boat or airplane. The 
stamp is really a kind of money that gets mail 
delivered. 


THE CUSTOM OF OWNING THINGS 31 


In some towns and cities we buy street-car 
tickets and use them instead of money to ride 
on street cars. Most of us have seen milk cards 
that are marked off or punched as we get our 
milk, or tickets that conductors punch in 
exchange for a ride on a train. 

It is certainly easier for us to do our buying 
and selling than it was for the people who 
had no money. We work, or our parents 
work, and are paid money for working. We 
take this money to the stores to buy food and 
clothing and other things we need. 

We can buy houses to live in or pay rent 
to live in them. We buy furniture to put in 
them. We buy books and radio sets and 
tickets for the theater. 

Think how much more difficult it would 
be if for everything that we needed we had 
to trade some other piece of property that 
we owned. 

We have found that using money is the 
easiest way to buy and sell. To every one 
who lives in this county, a dime is worth ten 


Why is money 
a help in buying 
and selling? 


32 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


Is using 
money a 


custom? 


cents and a dollar is worth ten dimes. We 
have things made even easier by the use of 
paper money. Think how your pockets would 
be loaded if you were to carry ten or twelve 
silver dollars. We can carry that amount in 
paper money without any trouble, and always 
know that the paper money is just as good as 
the coins would be. 

Using money for exchange is a custom with 
us. It is a custom with all the civilized people 
on earth. All money is not the same in value, 
for in different countries different kinds of 
money are used. But it is all used as we use 
it: to buy and sell. And everywhere that 
money is used its use grew out of the custom 
of owning things. 

Something else that grew out of the custom 
of ownership, and of buying and selling, is a 
system of weights and measures. It generally 
does not occur to us when we buy a pound of 
sugar, a dozen eggs, a ton of coal, or a yard 
of cloth that there was once no sure way of 
measuring the things that we use. 


A yard was the distance 
from his nose to his thumb 

















THE CUSTOM OF OWNING THINGS 33 


Such a system for measuring was not worked 
out until long after people learned to use 
figures. In fact, until quite recent times, people 
were still using very rough ways of measur¬ 
ing things. To measure length they used the 
palm of the hand (that is, the width of the 
hand), the foot, and the “cubit”, or the length 
from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger. 
Since no two persons would measure exactly the 
same for any of these, we can see that this 
way of measuring was just a little better than 
guessing. 

There came a time, of course, when people 
realized that their customs for measuring were 
bad, and slowly they changed the customs. 
One of the kings of England set the yard 
measure that we use today. It was the distance 
from the point of his nose to the end of his 
thumb. For a long time people used a foot 
measure that was over thirteen inches long. 

Ways of measuring weights came a little 
later when another English king said that 
thirty-two grains of wheat should weigh one 


What are 
weights and 
measures? 


34 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


Why are they 
important 
customs? 


pennyweight, that twenty pence (English 
pennies) should weigh one ounce, and that 
twelve ounces should be one pound. This 
custom kept on changing, too. Now we say 
that sixteen ounces make one pound. 

A very important thing about the custom 
of measuring things correctly is that it has 
made it possible for inventors, scientists, 
and machine workers to measure things to 
a thousandth of an inch. This is quite 
different from merely guessing. Because of 
it we can have such things as automobiles, 
airplanes, telescopes, and many important 
things that we use every day because these 
things have to be made according to careful 
measurements in order to work correctly. 


Chapter III 


THE CUSTOM OF WORK 


E VERYBODY, as a rule, has to work. 

Young children, when they reach a 
certain age, must put away their toys. Little h wor\ a 
girls like to help their mothers with the house- custom? 
work. Small boys generally have certain things 
to do every day to help their fathers. As soon 
as we go to school we have to work to learn 
things. When we are through with school 
we work to earn a living. Before we are old 
enough to earn a living for ourselves, someone 
else has been working to earn it for us. 

The hats, the shoes and stockings, the 
dresses and coats, everything we wear means 
a certain amount of work that someone 
has done. Everything we eat means work. 
Everything we must have to live and be com¬ 
fortable means work for somebody. 


35 


36 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


Has it always 
been so? 


We are taught to like work and not to be 
ashamed of it. Even people who have so 
much money that they would never need to 
work again often keep right on working 
because they like it. Work is now a general 
custom. 

People have not always thought work was 
a fine thing. Some tribal folk thought work 
tiresome—that is, such work as plowing the 
ground to grow food, and making gar¬ 
ments—and unworthy of men. That was 
the work for women to do. The men, they 
thought, being brave and strong, were not 
meant to be doing such things as putting 
seeds in the ground. They should be out 
hunting wild and fierce animals, or fighting 
other tribes of men just as wild and fierce as 
the animals. 

So it was that to women fell the work of 
scraping the animal skins and stretching 
them out to dry. The women had to make 
them into clothes to wear. They also had 
to prepare the meat for eating. They had to 


THE CUSTOM OF WORK 


37 


gather wood for the fire and see that the fire 
did not go out. They had to make the 
clumsy dishes that were used to store food. 
They had to scratch the ground with sticks 
and plant seeds so that food might grow 
near their homes. 

Sometimes women even made or helped 
make the spears and arrow-heads that the 
men used to hunt with, although this was 
usually thought to be part of the hunting 
and men might do it. 

This sounds, of course, as if the women 
had to work very hard. They did. But it 
does not mean that the men led an easy 
life. Their lives were in constant danger, 
for their weapons were very clumsy and the 
beasts they had to kill for food were often 
very strong and savage. There was always 
the danger that some wild beast might pounce 
upon a hunter and kill him before he could 
even try to use his ax or spear. To the men, 
too, fell the duty of protecting the women 
and children. What is done by the men in 



The men were in great 
danger, jor beasts were 
strong and savage 


Are customs of 
wor\ ali\e the 
world over? 






a' 











38 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


Is tvor\ a 
good custom? 


one tribe may be done by women in another. 

In some places men found that animals could 
help them in their work, and in other places 
they used captured men from other tribes whom 
they held as slaves. 

Even much later, when the world had 
grown more civilized, there was still some 
people who thought it degrading for men to 
work. The Greeks, who were very wise 
people for their time, thought that to work 
for money was unworthy. To them it was 
much more important for a man to spend 
his time in study so that he might always be 
learning more and more. 

The Romans, too, thought it was not right 
for a man to work. To work for money would 
have made them ashamed. By fighting they 
could take property from other people. And 
that, they thought, was a much finer way of 
getting possession of the things they needed 
or wanted. Women and slaves did the work 
at home. 

Only in the last few hundred years has it 


THE CUSTOM OF WORK 


39 


become a custom to work. Now, instead of 
despising work we respect it as something 
fine and noble. Nobody is ashamed of work¬ 
ing; rather, we are proud of it. For we know 
that by hard work even the poorest of us may 
become better off. All of us have a chance to 
get some of the things we want most if we 
are willing to work hard for them. 

What changed work from something to be 
ashamed of to something to be proud of? 

It took a great many things to bring about 
such a big change. One of the most impor¬ 
tant of these was the discovery of new con¬ 
tinents. This meant that there were new 
places for people to live. Those who were un¬ 
happy where they were could go to the new 
places and begin again. Then, too, there was 
more chance of getting rich quickly in a new 
land where everyone started with the same 
opportunities. 

It was a long time after Columbus dis¬ 
covered this wonderful new land of America 
that people came to live here. Even then 


How did it 
come to be so? 


40 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


How was 
wor\ made 
easier? 



there were not very many of them, and life 
was even harder here than it had been in the 
old countries. They had to work very hard, 
but very few of them chose to go back. Most 
of them were happy here and most of them 
knew that there was wealth here for those who 
were willing to work for it. 

New inventions were another thing that 
changed people’s ideas about work. Many of 
the new inventions made work much easier. 
There were better ways of spinning thread 
and weaving cloth, so that all the work that 
had been done very slowly by hand could be 
done very quickly by machines. 

There were new tools for the farmer and 
new tools for the housewife. There were ma¬ 
chines that would make shoes and machines 
that would knit stockings. There was a new 
kind of boat invented that was run by steam, 
and there were steam engines that pulled 
trains from one town to another. 

A way was found to flash messages through 
the air. It was called the telegraph. And 



Spinning could 
then be done 
by machine 





THE CUSTOM OF WORK 


41 


then someone invented a queer machine that 
you could talk into and someone listening, 
miles away, might hear you. That was the 
telephone. 

Another funny thing was seen on the 
streets one day, and everybody laughed. It 
was a buggy that went without having a horse 
to pull it. People thought this was a big joke. 
Today we can scarcely count the automobiles 
we see on the streets. 

Two men worked on a machine which they 
thought they could make fly through the air. 
People came from miles around to laugh at 
them, too. Now people fly across the coun¬ 
try in airplanes, Lindbergh flew across the 
Atlantic Ocean, and Byrd flew over the North 
and the South Poles. 

Along with these bigger inventions were 
smaller ones which also changed people’s 
ways of living. There was the sewing ma¬ 
chine, the vacuum cleaner, furnaces, radios, 
machines to make ice, machines to can all 
kinds of vegetables and fruits and meat, 

„ (a 

The people thought the 

auto was a jo\e 


Have inventions 
changed 
customs? 







42 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


Did they 
affect many 
people? 


washing machines, electric irons, toasters, and 
coffee pots. 

It seems strange to think that there was a 
time when people lived without all these 
things. It is not hard to see what a difference 
all of these things have made in the way we 
live and the way we work. 

When a machine was invented which 
could make a stocking quicker than it could 
be made by hand, it meant that people could 
have more stockings to wear. There would 
be more cotton and more wool needed, 
which meant more work for the farmers. 
The cotton and wool had to be turned into 
thread, and that meant work for the people 
who ran machines which turned wool and 
cotton into thread. More people were needed 
to sell stockings, and that meant more work. 

The people who used to do these things by 
hand had to find some other way to make a 
living. At the same time, the business of 
buying and selling was getting to be bigger and 
bigger. Wagon loads, train loads, and boat 


THE CUSTOM OF WORK 


43 


loads of wheat, potatoes and meat would be 
sent from the country to the city. The city 
would send back to the country cloth, shoes, 
furniture, and tools. 

Not only did the trading between the city 
and the country grow; the trading between 
different parts of the world grew just as fast. 
Big boats went into every ocean and stopped 
at every port. Merchants took coal from the 
mines to the factories, and sewing machines 
and plows and overalls and dresses from the 
factories to the miners. The custom that 
started thousands of years before with two 
savages trading their tools has grown into a 
huge business called world commerce. 

All this growth of business and trade has 
made a great difference in the way we live. 
People are paid more now for the work they 
do. This means that all of us have more 
money to spend. Having more money has 
raised our standard of living. “Standard of 
living” simply means the things we think we 
must have to be comfortable. 


How does 
business 
affect us? 


44 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


What things 
do we thin\ 
we must have? 


Let us name some of the things we think 
we must have. First of all we think we must 
have a house to live in—not just a rough 
building with walls and a roof, but a snug 
house that will keep us warm in winter and 
cool in summer. We must have rugs on the 
floor, curtains at the windows, pictures on the 
walls. There must be a separate room for a 
bathtub and a toilet. There must be hot and 
cold water by turning a faucet. We want 
a stove that cooks food by turning on the gas or 
the electricity. We want soft beds with warm 
covers. Most homes could not get along 
without a telephone, a radio or a phonograph, 
books and magazines for everyone, and toys 
for the children. We must each have several 
changes of clothing that is good enough so 
that we are not ashamed of the way we look 
when we are with other people. These are 
the things we think we must have: We would 
be very unhappy if any of them were taken 
from us. 

What about our grandparents’ homes? We 


THE CUSTOM OF WORK 


45 


know that their homes often did not have a 
white porcelain tub which they could fill with 
warm water by turning a faucet. Many of Have these 
them even had to get their cold water from always be i n 

. iit . i. , , necessary? 

a pump in the back yard. They did not have 
radios. Most of them did not have telephones. 

Sometimes their homes were heated by fire¬ 
places and sometimes by stoves, but seldom 
by a furnace such as heats our houses and 
apartments. Grandmother, perhaps, had to 
keep a wood fire burning in an iron stove in 
order to cook for the family. Grandmother 
and grandfather probably carried the wood in 
from a wood pile back of the house. 

Would you like to have lived then? Can 
you imagine how different it must have been 
from the way we live today? Can you see how 
all these changes came about because there 
were new countries to live in, new inventions, 
more work to do, more things to buy and sell? 

All of these things made it possible for 
everybody to work and for everybody to earn 
more money. Having more money meant 

Traveling was 
different a jew 
years ago 






46 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


What is the real 
purpose of 
wor\? 


that people could have more of the things 
they wanted. Having these things turned 
them from luxuries into necessities. A luxury 
is something you want but don’t need. A 
necessity is something you must have. A lot 
of things that used to be luxuries are now 
necessities, such as a bathtub or electric lights. 

Slowly, then, people’s ideas about work 
changed. If work was the thing that would 
bring a person such things as fine clothes, 
good food, and comfortable houses, then work 
was something to be proud of. So it became 
a custom to work. 

People no longer worked just enough to get 
a little to eat and a place to sleep. It grew to 
be the custom to work hard so that one might 
have good things to eat, and a fine place to 
live in. It is a custom now to work just as 
well as we can so that we may get as many 
of the fine things in the world as we can. The 
custom of work gives everyone a chance to 
have more of the things that he wants. 


Chapter IV 


THE CUSTOM OF FASHION 

I F YOU are a boy and all the other boys in 
your class at school are wearing long trous¬ 
ers, you think you must have long trousers, too, 
don’t you? And, if you had to, you would 
give up a lot of other things to get them, 
wouldn’t you? 

If you are a girl and all the girls you know 
start wearing pleated skirts and sweaters 
when all you have is a one-piece dress, you will 
feel badly, won’t you? You will ask your 
mother for a pleated skirt and sweater. And 
you won’t be really happy until you are 
dressed like other girls. 

Fathers and mothers are like that, too. 
Everyone is like that. We all want to be “in 
fashion.” It is strange, isn’t it, that fashion 
is so very important to all of us? Sometimes 


What are 
fashions? 


47 


48 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


Are there more 
than one \ind 
of fashions? 


we will even give up things to eat, or other 
things important to our comfort, just so that 
we may have some new kind of clothing that 
is fashionable. 

We want to be in fashion so that people will 
like us and think well of us, and not regard 
us as “queer” or unfriendly. 

Fashion is one of man’s customs. Although 
the fashions we have today are new, the custom 
of having fashions is one of the oldest customs 
of all. The early people who were not in 
fashion were just as unhappy about it as 
we are today. 

When we speak of fashions we usually 
think of only one kind. That is the fashion 
of dress. With dress, however, go some other 
fashions which cannot very well be separated 
from it. We call them all personal fashions, 
and they mean fashions in dress, jewelry, 
hairdressing, hats, shoes, and so on. 

Take the matter of shoes, for instance. No 
woman of today feels that she is rightly clothed 
unless her feet are dressed in shoes which 


THE CUSTOM OF FASHION 


49 


match her dress and suit the place. There 
are street shoes, afternoon shoes, dancing 
slippers, golf shoes, and bathing shoes. There 
is a time and place to wear each one of them. 
Anyone who wore golf shoes with a party dress 
would seem odd to us. 

The custom of dressing the feet is not a 
new one. People have even done more than 
simply dress their feet. For hundreds of 
years in China it was fashionable for women 
to have very tiny feet. Chinese ladies bound 
the feet of their baby girls. The bandages 
were kept on very tightly until the Chinese 
girl was grown. She was very proud then of 
the feet that had not been able to grow with 
her. They were bent and ugly and crippled. 
To the Chinese girl of that time, size was all 
that mattered. She was in fashion because her 
feet were tiny. Having tiny feet was meant 
to show that she had so many servants that 
she did not have to walk, as common people 
do. It is now being given up, for all bad 
customs have to go, sooner or later. 


Are there 
fashions in 
feet? 


50 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


Can faces be 
fashionable? 


There have actually been fashions in faces, 
too. This seems odd, because, after all, we 
are born with the faces we have and cannot 
do very much to change them. But tribal 
people did a lot to change their faces. In 
Samoa it was thought beautiful to have a very 
flat nose and face. Samoan mothers pressed 
their babies’ faces to make them flat. 

Other such folk thought it lovely to have 
very large lips. This they accomplished by 
slitting the lips when the children were young 
and putting small round pieces of wood in 
the slit. As the lips stretched, larger pieces 
of wood were used, until finally when they 
were grown the tribal man or woman had 
lips almost as big as saucers. 

Large ears were thought beautiful by some 
tribes. To be in the fashion they pierced 
holes in the lobes of their ears and pulled 
them down with heavy weights until the ears 
hung down over the shoulder. 

We think these fashions silly and ugly. 
We do not have such painful fashions, but 


THE CUSTOM OF FASHION 


51 


we still have fashions in faces. Many women 
do not consider themselves well dressed un¬ 
less they have a little rouge on their cheeks 
and powder on their noses. Most men shave 
their faces every day so that they will not have 
beards. Not so very many years ago in this 
country it was considered wicked for a girl 
to put powder on her face, and the men, even 
the young men, all wore beards and moustaches. 
In those days people wanted to look older, 
because older people had many more rights 
than young people. Nowadays, everybody 
wants to look young, because we think more 
highly of youth than we used to. 

Fashions in hair follow those in dress. 
Tribal people have invented many strange 
and wonderful ways of dressing the hair. 
But no savage ever had a hairdress stranger 
than those worn by fashionable ladies several 
hundred years ago. Then the hair was 
powdered snow-white, curled, and arranged 
in a tower of puffs and curls that was some¬ 
times eighteen inches high. 


Do we 
fashions 
faces? 


52 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


Do fashions in 
hair change? 


For a long time men wore their hair long 
or wore wigs of long hair. We all know how 
George Washington looked with a ribbon 
tied to his hair at the back of his neck. A 
little before that time men wore wigs of hair 
powdered white, with curls that came below 
the shoulders. Can you imagine your father 
going to work wearing a wig like that? Yet 
in those days no man would have thought of 
going out without his wig. 

Not very long ago women began having 
their hair cut short. Many people groaned 
and shook their heads at such a terrible idea. 
Today we are quite used to seeing mothers 
and grandmothers with bobbed hair. No one 
thinks it strange, because we are used to the 
fashion. We think it is a good thing, because 
it is easier to take care of short hair. 

There are fashions in ornaments, too. 
When primitive people had little to use for 
decoration besides shells and feathers they 
tattooed themselves. They were willing to 
suffer a great deal of pain just to be fashion- 



In Lincoln s time fashionable ladies wore hoop 
s\irts that were very wide 


53 





















54 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


How about 
ornaments? 


able. Some Indian women have been seen 
wearing six quarts of beads. Think how 
heavy they would be to carry around! Other 
tribal women wore iron rings weighing 
four to six pounds around their arms and 
legs and necks. Some of them wore iron beads 
as large as potatoes. A string of these beads 
would weigh thirty-five pounds and the 
women had to walk very slowly to be able to 
carry them. But they were fashionable! 

In Abraham Lincoln’s time ladies wore 
hoop skirts. They were not very heavy, but 
they were so wide that they caused trouble in 
getting in and out of carriages and through 
narrow places. Still they were fashionable. 
Years after that women wore the “hobble 
skirt.” It was so tight around the ankles that 
walking was really very hard. 

Nowadays, women wear much shorter skirts, 
because they have become fashionable. Short 
skirts are much more comfortable and cleanly, 
for they are not tight, and they do not trail 
on the ground, gathering up dirt and germs. 


THE CUSTOM OF FASHION 


55 


The custom of fashion does not stop with 
personal fashions. There is a fashion that tells 
us how we should build our homes and how 
we should live. The houses that are built to¬ 
day look very different from the ones built a 
hundred years ago. Fashions in buildings 
have changed. Fashions in furniture, wall 
paper, rugs, and dishes have changed since 
then, too. The new fashions make for more 
light and air, and for greater cleanliness. 

With these changes in houses and furnish¬ 
ings comes also a change in the way we live. 
Many of the things that people ate hundreds 
of years ago are not eaten now, because 
we have better food and ways of cooking. 
We also eat many things now that used to be 
thought worthless or even poisonous. 

It is fashionable to be clean now. There 
was a time when people did not think much 
about dirt. It was much harder to be clean 
then than now. People used to throw their 
garbage into the streets because they had no 
better place for it and did not know that it 


Do these 
fashions 
affect our lives? 


56 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


Are there 
fashions in 
disease? 


would spread disease. No one would think 
of doing that now, because the custom has 
changed. 

There have even been fashions in disease. 
When doctors first found that our appen¬ 
dix was something we could get along 
without, it was quite fashionable to have an 
appendicitis operation. Later, when doctors 
found that many times other sickness was 
caused by unhealthy tonsils, it was fashionable 
to have your tonsils taken out, whether they 
were unhealthy or not. Most people, of 
course, did not have enough money to have 
fashionable diseases. These fashions, fortu¬ 
nately, did not last very long. Bad fashions, 
as we have seen, tend to die out. 

We have fashions in language, too. The 
slang words used now are not the ones that 
were used ten years ago, perhaps even five 
years ago. Some words that are not slang are 
gradually dropped from the language. Then 
we say they are obsolete. There are always 
new words being made. Language does not 


THE CUSTOM OF FASHION 


57 


change very much, but it has fashions like 
almost everything else. 

The important thing about fashions is not 
that they are sometimes silly or sometimes 
uncomfortable, or even painful, but that they 
are a custom. They have been a custom since 
people first lived on earth. They will prob¬ 
ably always be a custom. So long as they 
are, most people would rather be “in fashion” 
than out. And as time goes on, bad fashions 
pass away, and better ones take their place. 


What is 
important 
about fashions? 


Chapter V 


What is 
etiquette? 


THE CUSTOM OF ETIQUETTE 

E VERY man and boy knows that he should 
take his hat off when he steps into a 
house. We all say “thank you” when we are 
given something. We say “hello” when we 
meet someone we know and “goodbye” when 
we leave him. We know that there are certain 
things we may do or say at the dinner table 
and other things we may not. 

There are special words for the customs that 
tell us how we should behave. They are eti¬ 
quette and politeness . Many large books 
have been written about them. Yet all of us 
learn about etiquette and politeness without 
reading books. They are things we learn 
along with learning to talk and walk. 

Probably you have held out a toy in front of 
a baby sister or brother and said, “Say please.” 


58 


THE CUSTOM OF ETIQUETTE 


59 


Very soon the baby learns to make a sound 
that means “please” to us, so that he may get 
the things he wants. “Now say thank you,” 
we tell the babies, after we have given them 
something they want. Before long they are 
saying “ta ta” or “tank oo.” The sounds they 
make may sound funny to us, but by making 
those sounds the baby is learning etiquette. 

By the time we go to kindergarten all of us 
know how to eat at the table. Babies, like 
savages, would rather eat with their hands. 
When they are first fed with a spoon they do 
not like it. Soon they get used to being fed 
with a spoon, and when they are old enough 
to feed themselves, they know that it is right 
to use a spoon to put food into the mouth and 
that it is wrong to use the hands. A little later 
they learn to use a fork. And still later they 
learn to use a knife to cut with and to spread 
butter or jelly on bread. By this time they 
have a good start in learning table manners, 
which are an important part of etiquette. 

Other kinds of etiquette we also learn 


How is it 
learned? 


60 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


Is it the 

same everywhere? 


gradually from the time we are very small, so 
that we do not know we are learning. 

Every group of people has different cus¬ 
toms of etiquette and politeness. Our own 
rules of good conduct might seem impolite 
to other groups. 

Perhaps you have heard people say, “When 
in Rome do as the Romans do.” This means 
that Rome or Turkey or the United States 
each has its own customs and that when you 
are in any of those places it is better to follow 
the customs of etiquette and politeness used by 
the people there. People in different parts of 
the earth know more now than they used to 
about each other and each other’s customs. 
The telegraph, the cables, trains, steamships, 
and airplanes have brought us closer together. 

In China people know that our manners are 
not like theirs. If we were visiting in China 
and made mistakes in politeness, our mistakes 
would be overlooked. The Chinese would 
realize that we did not know their customs 
and they would be curious to know ours. 


THE CUSTOM OF ETIQUETTE 


61 


One great difference in polite custom is 
seen in the ways we show respect. Western 
men—that is all Americans and Europeans— 
uncover their heads to show respect. When 
they meet a lady, when the flag passes by, 
when they enter a house or a church, they 
take off their hats. 

Orientals—that is, men of the countries in 
the East—cover their heads to show respect. 
They would never think of entering a temple 
without a covering of some sort on their heads. 
Instead, they remove their shoes. To us this 
seems queer and a big nuisance. Most Orientals 
wear a kind of shoe that the foot slips into and 
out of easily, so that this custom is not incon¬ 
venient for them. In front of every temple 
you will see row after row of shoes that people 
have left there before going inside. As they 
come out they must all stop to put their shoes 
on. We may wonder how they ever get their 
own shoes back, but evidently this causes little 
trouble, for the custom has been used for hun¬ 
dreds of years. Even the Orientals who are 


What are 
some of the 
great differences? 


62 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


Can rudeness 
be politeness? 





modern enough to wear the kind of shoes 
that we wear follow the old custom. 

We think it very rude to turn our backs on 
anyone. Most of us would be hurt or insulted 
if a friend turned his back on us when we 
started to speak to him. 

Again, some Orientals have a different cus- 
tom. They think it polite to turn their backs. 
By turning their backs they mean to say that 
the one who is speaking to them is such a 
godlike person that they cannot bear to look 
him in the face. It would dazzle them. 

Kissing is another custom of politeness 
that is not the same in all parts of the world. 
In this country men do not kiss each other. 
They shake hands. Women who are good 
friends and have not seen each other for some 
time usually kiss when they meet. Some¬ 
times, when we are young, we do not like to 
be kissed by our aunts and uncles, our grand¬ 
mothers and cousins, but it is the custom for 
close relatives to kiss each other. Boys some¬ 
times have the idea that it is unmanly to be 


They leave their 
shoes outside 


















THE CUSTOM OF ETIQUETTE 


63 


kissed, because they do not see their fathers 
being kissed by other people. 

In France even grown men kiss each other, 
not once, but twice. They kiss on each cheek. 
During the war when our American soldiers 
were decorated for bravery they were kissed 
by the French officer who was giving them 
the decoration. 

In China and Japan kissing is regarded 
with disgust. In other places in the world it 
is unknown. Instead of kissing, people rub 
noses, they bite, or they smell one another. 
These customs seem just as funny to us as 
kissing would seem to them. 

In India the Hindus clean their teeth 
every day with a fresh twig. They think it 
terrible that Europeans and Americans use a 
brush made of animal hair for that purpose, 
and that they use the brush more than once. 
Almost any Hindu would rather not have his 
teeth clean than use one of our dainty tooth 
brushes. Most of us, if we were given a twig 
to use, would look at it and say, “What’s the 


Do people 
\iss in 

all countries? 


64 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


Do politeness 
habits change? 


use? You can’t clean teeth with that. Might 
as well not use anything.” 

Having seen how different the customs of 
politeness are in different parts of the world, 
let us think about some of our own rules of 
etiquette. Most of them are habits with us, so 
that we don’t think of them as customs. 

Gentlemen remove or touch their hats 
when they meet in the street a lady they know. 
Ladies nod to the gentlemen or speak to them. 
Men remove their hats when they enter a house 
or a church. It used to be a custom for them 
to remove their hats if they were in an elevator 
or a train with a lady, but this custom is chang¬ 
ing. If a man and a woman are going through 
the same door, the man lets the woman go first. 

There are many customs about eating that 
we all use. We sit at a table with our arms 
close to our sides so as not to bump the person 
next to us. Each one has his own plate and 
his own eating implements and his own glass 
of water. This is different from the earlier days 
when everyone dipped his hand or spoon into 


THE CUSTOM OF ETIQUETTE 


65 


one big dish. We eat quietly so that there is 
no noise of chewing or drinking. We eat 
certain foods with certain implements. Things 
we cannot eat with a fork we eat with a spoon. 
We never put a knife into our mouths. We 
do not butter a whole slice of bread; we break 
it in half first. It used to be a rule that salad 
was eaten only with a fork. Since many times 
it is hard to cut with a fork, you may now use 
a knife to cut your salad, if necessary. We use 
a napkin to wipe our mouths and hands if they 
need it. When we have finished eating we 
ask to be excused if we cannot wait until every¬ 
one has finished. 

There are so many customs of etiquette 
about inviting people to visit that we could not 
begin to name them all here. One of the most 
important is the custom of thanking those who 
have invited you. 

We have special customs of etiquette for 
special times. Funerals, weddings, church 
services, all have sets of customs which we 
follow. There are special and troublesome 


Do eating 
customs change? 


66 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


Are there 
rules for 
meeting people? 


rules for meeting kings and princes. Most of 
us will never meet kings and princes, but we 
might all some day meet the president of the 
United States. Etiquette in the White House 
is kept very simple, yet there are special cus¬ 
toms there, too. In speaking to the president 
we would not speak to him as “Mr. Hoover, 5 ' 
but would say, “Mr. President . 55 

The customs of politeness and etiquette are 
like all other customs. They do not always 
stay the same. In fact, they are always chang¬ 
ing. Politeness and etiquette are closely 
connected with the custom of fashion and are 
likely to change with the fashions of dress. 

There was a time in this country when it 
was impolite for children to speak to grown-ups 
unless the grown-ups spoke first. “Children 
should be seen, not heard,” was what people said 
in those days. Now we do not expect children 
to be absolutely quiet when they are with older 
people, because we know that talking with 
older people and asking questions is one of the 
best ways to learn. 


Etiquette often changes with 
fashions orders 




THE CUSTOM OF ETIQUETTE 


67 


You have probably noticed that when a man 
and a woman are walking along the street, 
the man generally takes the outside of the side¬ 
walk. This is another custom that is changing, 
because there is now no need for the man to 
walk on the outside. In earlier days before 
most of our streets were paved the roads got 
very muddy when it rained or snowed. Since 
the sidewalks were very close to the street, 
people on the sidewalks were apt to get 
splashed with dirty water and mud whenever 
a carriage or wagon passed them. 

It was polite for men to walk nearest the road 
so that the women and girls would not get 
their dresses and coats splashed. In a few more 
years men will have forgotten that it used to 
be polite to take the outside of the sidewalk, 
and women will not expect them to do so. 

In early times, in the Middle Ages, and in 
some places even now, it is considered all right 
to eat rapidly and to make a great deal of noise 
while eating. At first, people ate quickly 
because they were hungry and because they 


Why do men 
wal\ nearest 
the street? 


68 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


What custom 
is changing 
now? 


were afraid someone else would get more food 
than they did. Later, it was regarded as bad 
manners if people showed that they were 
enjoying their food. 

During the Middle Ages people had grown 
a long way past the savage state, but they still 
had customs of etiquette that we think bar¬ 
baric. As they ate meat they would throw the 
bones over their shoulders upon the floor. In¬ 
stead of using napkins to wipe their hands they 
used the table cloth, if there was one, or their 
own clothes, if there was not. Our ideas of 
cleanliness have changed so much that we 
think such customs worse than impolite. 

A few years ago a gentleman would always 
ask a lady, “May I smoke?” before he lit a 
cigarette or cigar. Now that a great many 
women smoke, men usually do not think of 
asking that question. It has become a custom 
for women to smoke, too. Only time will tell 
whether it will get to be a bad custom, or 
become a right. 

Custom in this matter has changed and is 


THE CUSTOM OF ETIQUETTE 


69 


changing because of the changing customs of 
living. Women are free to do a great many 
things now that they could not do ten years 
ago. Men are freer, too, and so are children. 
Our customs of living, our fashions and eti¬ 
quette have changed rapidly in the last few 
hundred years. That is not true everywhere. 
The people of the Orient have their own kinds 
of good manners which they have been using 
thousands of years and which have not changed 
much in all that time. 

But the more that people with different cus¬ 
toms meet, the more customs change. 


Are all 
customs 
changing? 


Chapter VI 


Why do 
we play? 


THE CUSTOM OF PLAY 

W HEREVER there is work, there must 
be play. One goes with the other, just 
as night follows day and spring follows winter. 
Everybody has heard the old saying: All wor\ 
and no play ma\es Jac\ a dull boy . If men 
and women spent all their time working, or 
if children spent all their time studying, when 
not eating or sleeping, they would soon become 
dull and tired. But by spending part of their 
time in play, their minds and bodies are kept 
fresh, and they can do much better work 
when they actually are working than they could 
do otherwise. 

Long ago there probably was no difference 
between work and play. But now since most 
people do just a part of the whole job and do 
the same little things and work mostly with 


70 


THE CUSTOM OF PLAY 


71 


machines, they like to do some other things 
which are refreshing and a change—things 
which they don’t have to do. 

Even animals like to play, especially when 
they are young. You have seen a pair of 
puppies tumbling over each other, or a kitten 
chasing a ball of yarn around a room. 

Today there are all kinds of play, suited to 
men, women, and children, of every age. 

In the beginning the custom of play, like How 
other customs, was very simple. People wanted p,ay 
to play because they did not like to be alone. 

They loved companionship just as we do. 

After the work of the day was over, they 
danced and sang together, and perhaps the 
boys and girls ran foot-races or played games 
such as “tag” or “hide and seek.” 

The little girls would have dolls to play with, 
and the young boys would play at hunting 
with toy bows and arrows. For children every¬ 
where and in all times have liked to play at 
doing the things that they will do when they 
are grown up. Every girl in the tribe expected 


72 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


What are 
teams? 


some day to have real babies of her own to 
care for, and the boys all looked forward to 
the time when they would be great hunters. 

The people who lived in tribes, far back in 
the world’s history, had quite a number of 
games they liked to play. One of the earliest 
games was throwing and catching balls. The 
great thing about games like this is that the 
players have to use their heads. They must 
keep their eyes and ears open and watch sharply 
every move of the other player or players. 

Out of this early game of ball there have 
grown all kinds of different games using balls, 
such as handball, baseball, football, basketball, 
and tennis, out of which boys and girls today 
get so much fun. Schools and colleges every¬ 
where have their teams, made up of pupils in 
the school or college, which play these games 
with teams from other schools and colleges. 

When a boy becomes a member of one of 
the ball teams of his school, he learns things 
that will be of great help to him in later life. 
He must be unselfish; he must work with the 


THE CUSTOM OF PLAY 


73 


other boys, so that the team will win. He 
must obey the rules of fair play; he must not 
do anything that is dishonest. So he learns 
how to work with other people in order to 
accomplish something worth while. 

Baseball is the most popular outdoor game 
in America. It is played with a bat and a ball 
on a field shaped like a diamond, with four 
bases, between which the players run. There 
are nine players on each side, one side being 
“at the bat” while the other side is “in the 
field.” 

Football is a game that draws great crowds 
to see it played by college teams during the 
football season, which is in the autumn. The 
ball is of pigskin, filled with air, and longer 
from end to end than across the middle. The 
field on which the game is played is called a 
gridiron, because of the way in which it is 
marked with lines. There are eleven players 
on each side. They try to kick or carry the 
ball over the goal line of the other side. 

Basketball is a game much like football. 


What is the 
most popular 
game? 


The players have 
to use their heads 







74 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


Where is 

cric\et 

played? 


But it is an indoor game, and so can be played 
in winter, when the weather is too cold for 
outdoor games. It is a game that girls, too, 
can play. The ball is a large, round one. 
There are five players on each team, and they 
try to throw the ball as many times as possible 
into a large, basket-like net hanging over the 
other team’s goal line. It is great fun, both 
playing the game and watching others play it. 

Tennis is an outdoor ball game that many 
people like to play. You have all seen games 
of tennis and know how the players strike 
the ball by means of a wide bat of wickerwork, 
called a racquet, over a low net stretched across 
the tennis court. Tennis requires quick move¬ 
ment with arms and legs and a keen eye. It 
is a fine form of exercise. 

Another kind of ball game is known as 
cricket. In America few people play cricket, 
but in England and in the British Dominions 
it is the national outdoor game, just as base¬ 
ball is in America. Two teams, each with 
eleven men, play the game. Balls are bowled, 


THE CUSTOM OF PLAY 75 

by means of bats in the players’ hands, between 
wickets, which are a sort of low fence. About 
the game of cricket there has grown up a fine 
spirit of sportsmanship, so that the word cricket 
has come to mean the very highest type of 
fair play. 

Still another kind of ball game which people 
everywhere, especially the older folk, like to 
play is golf. It is fine, health-building exercise 
for persons who cannot play the more exciting 
games that youngsters enjoy. It was Scotland 
that gave golf to the world. Even before the 
discovery of America, golf was the most popular 
of all games in Scotland. When King James 
came from Scotland to rule over England, he 
brought golf with him. Golf is a game that 
is played out in the open country, over a long 
stretch of ground called a golf course. Around 
every large city there are many golf courses 
where people go to play golf and build up 
their tired bodies and refresh their minds. 

The game of golf is played with a little, hard 
ball, which is driven over the ground by means 


Where did 
golf start? 


76 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


How is 
hockey played? 


of long clubs of different kinds. The purpose 
of the game is to hit the ball so that it will fall 
into a hole a long distance away. There are 
eighteen of these holes on the course, and the 
player tries to drive the ball into them with 
the fewest number of strokes. Recently, a 
kind of “baby” golf, played indoors, or on small 
outdoor courses has become very popular. 

Something like golf, but more exciting, is 
the game of hockey, which is often played on 
an ice rink. There are two teams of six men; 
the players use long, curved sticks, and they 
try to drive the ball (or puck) into the other 
side’s goal. 

It is wonderful how many different kinds 
of games can be played with a ball. In Spanish¬ 
speaking countries the people love to play a 
game called jai alai (pronounced high a-lie ), 
or pelota. It is played usually by four players 
on each side. There is a hard-surfaced court 
with two walls, between which the ball is kept 
bounding back and forth. The player has a 
sort of wickerwork basket attached to his 


THE CUSTOM OF PLAY 


77 


hand, in which the ball must be caught. The 
game requires good footwork and a skilled eye. 

Another form of play that was enjoyed by 
the earliest tribes, and that still is a regular 
custom of people in every part of the world 
today, is dancing. Wherever we go, among 
the lowest savages or among the most highly 
civilized races, we find different kinds of 
dances. There are few customs so widespread 
as dancing. 

The people of early times used to dance for 
many reasons. Sometimes it was just a sort 
of merry-making and rejoicing among the 
people. At other times, they danced as a part 
of their worship of the gods. Other dances 
were to prepare the warriors of the tribe for 
battle, or to celebrate a victory afterwards. 
Dancing also was a part of the ceremonies 
when a boy reached manhood and was about 
to be admitted to membership in the tribe, and 
of course there were dances in connection with 
wedding festivities. 

The Indians in America were fond of danc- 


Is dancing a 
\ind of play? 


78 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


Why did 
Indians dance? 


ing. For their war dances, the men painted 
their bodies with red paint and covered their 
heads with large headdresses of eagle feathers. 
Among the Hopi Indians of the Southwest, 
the people danced when they wanted their 
gods to send them rain. Among the “black- 
fellows” of Australia, dancing is a very impor¬ 
tant custom. They call their dances corroborees. 
They paint their bodies with white paint, and 
dance around a fire, with all sorts of strange 
motions. 

Among the ancient Egyptians and the 
Hebrews, dancing also played an important 
part. In ancient Greece, dancing became a 
beautiful art. There was dancing when a child 
was born, there was dancing at weddings, and 
even at funerals when people died. Dances 
were held everywhere, in the woods and fields, 
and even in the holy temples. Young men 
were taught to dance as a means of making 
their bodies strong and their muscles elastic. 
The Greeks danced in honor of their gods, 
they danced at harvest time, and when gather- 


THE CUSTOM OF PLAY 


79 


ing the grapes in their vineyards. Dances came 
to have a religious meaning. 

The Romans, another famous people of long 
ago, also had many interesting dances. It was 
among the Romans that dancing became a 
regular part of acting in the theaters, just as 
it is today. 

Every spring, in certain parts of China, the 
men and boys dressed themselves up in special 
costumes, with animal masks over their faces, 
and danced to drive away the evil spirits, that 
they might not hurt the crops. 

In India, also, they have interesting dances. 
There is a special class of young women called 
nautch girls, who dance in the temples in order 
to bring good luck; they also dance at wed¬ 
dings, feasts, and public entertainments. In 
Japan they have groups of trained dancers that 
are known as geisha girls. 

In Arabia and other near-by countries there 
is a class of religious men called dervishes, who 
dance one of the strangest dances in the world. 
They whirl round and round like a top, with 


Why do the 
Chinese dance? 


80 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


What was 
the May-dance? 


great swiftness, and sometimes keep on whirl¬ 
ing until they drop in a faint. 

Among the Negroes in Africa there is a 
dance called the gorilla dance . Just before the 
men go out to hunt the fierce gorilla they 
perform a dance in which they go through all 
the motions of hunting the gorilla, and it ends 
with a great chorus which is supposed to show 
the men marching back home after the suc¬ 
cessful ending of the hunt. In the same way, 
American Indian tribes used to have bear and 
buffalo dances before they went out to hunt 
those animals, and in Australia the native 
tribes have a kangaroo dance. 

During the times called the Middle Ages, 
all through Europe, the people loved to dance. 
Among the country people in England there 
was a very pretty dance in the spring, when 
the crops were being planted. A large pole 
was set up on the village green, with brightly 
colored ribbons streaming from it. This was 
known as the May-pole, and young and old 
alike danced merrily around it. 


The Indians had bear and buffalo dances before 
going out to hunt 



81 

























82 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


Are dances 
popular now? 


Every country in Europe had its own dances. 
But it was in France, about 300 years ago, that 
social dancing, which is the custom today, 
grew up into a fine art. One of the most 
beautiful of these dances was the minuet. It 
was a stately and graceful dance, and our own 
great-grandparents in Colonial America were 
fond of dancing it. Another beautiful dance, 
which came a little later, was the waltz. People 
everywhere enjoyed dancing waltzes, and 
people dance them even today. Another dance 
that became very popular was the pol 1 {a. Of 
course, in our own day there are all kinds of 
new dance steps. 

During the last hundred years, in England, 
the United States, and other countries, special 
buildings called dance halls have been built for 
holding dances, in which many persons take 
part. At all dances some kind of music is 
played so that the people dancing can easily 
keep in step. Dancing is still one of the world’s 
leading customs of play. 

Music itself began as a form of play. There 


THE CUSTOM OF PLAY 


83 


is hardly any tribe so lowly that it does not 
have some way of making music. Even before 
any musical instruments were invented, people 
liked to sing. It was natural for man to want 
to make music, because Nature is full of music. 
There is the song of birds, the music of the 
sighing breezes, the music of the waves, and 
the music of the rustling leaves on the trees. 

By means of song and other music, people 
showed their joy and their sorrow, their love 
of sweethearts and family, and their worship 
of the heavenly powers. 

Among the first musical instruments were 
those made of strings fastened tightly over 
pieces of wood, and drums made by stretching 
skins over earthenware vessels or hollow pieces 
of tree trunk. By beating on the drum, the 
people of the tribe aroused the spirits of the 
men going off to the hunt or to war. Soon 
these early people learned to make flutes and 
other wind instruments out of hollow reeds. 

Out of the string stretched across a piece of 
wood there finally grew the beautiful violin 


How did 
music begin? 


What were 
the first 
instruments? 


84 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


What is 
chess? 



and the lovely harp. The piano is the child 
of the harp, the strings being struck by means 
of pressing keys instead of being plucked with 
the hand. And out of the rough flutes there 
has grown the majestic organ, which we hear 
being played in our churches. 

From early times there have been quiet 
games played indoors, often to while away the 
hours during the long winter evenings. Such 
are chess, checkers, dominoes, and card games. 
Let us look at some of these. 

Chess is considered by many people the king 
of games. It is one that requires a great deal 
of skill. It is played on a board divided into 
sixty-four squares. Each of the two players 
has sixteen “pieces,” one set being black and 
the other white. There is a king, a queen, 
two bishops, two knights, two rooks, and eight 
pawns. Each player tries, by skillful playing 
of his “pieces,” to invade the other player’s side 
and capture his “pieces.” The game is played 
under strict rules, and each player has to keep 
thinking fast and hard in order not to let the 


Chess requires a great 
deal of s\ill 










THE CUSTOM OF PLAY 


85 


other player catch him napping. Chess is one 
of the oldest games in the world. It is thought 
that it was played first in China and reached 
Europe by way of India. 

Checkers is a game something like chess, 
as it is played on a board with the same number 
of squares. It also takes skill to play well. 
The “pieces” are called men . There are twelve 
on each side, one side being black and the 
other white or red. Each player moves toward 
the last row, known as the kjng row, of the 
other side, capturing on the way as many of 
the other player’s men as possible, by “jumping” 
them. When a “man” reaches the king row, 
another “man” is placed over him, and he 
becomes a “king” and can move in any direc¬ 
tion, seeking to capture the other player’s 
“men” or “kings.” 

Checkers, too, is a very good game for mak¬ 
ing a person keep his wits sharp. Like chess, 
it is an ancient game, for we know that it was 
played by the old Greeks. It is sometimes called 
draughts . 


How is 
checkers 
played? 


86 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


What are 
dominoes? 


Where were 
playing cards 
invented? 


A different sort of game, also played by two 
persons, is dominoes. The “pieces” used in 
this game are small, flat, and oblong-shaped, 
made of ivory, bone, or wood. The full num¬ 
ber of pieces in a set is twenty-eight, each piece 
being marked with two sets of black or white 
spots, ranging in number from zero to twelve 
in different combinations. One player lays 
down a domino, and then the other player must 
match it with a domino having the same num¬ 
ber of spots on one side as there are on one 
side of the first domino. The first player must 
then match dominoes. When a player can¬ 
not match, he loses his turn. 

We come next to playing cards, with which 
all sorts of interesting games are played. Play¬ 
ing cards, we think, were invented in China. 
At any rate, they appeared in Europe during 
the Middle Ages, at least six hundred years ago. 

In different kinds of card games various 
numbers of people can play at the same time. 
Playing a card game well depends partly on 
the lucky cards that one receives when the cards 


THE CUSTOM OF PLAY 


87 


are given out, and partly on the skill with which 
a person plays the cards he gets. That is what 
makes card games so interesting. 

At first, there were usually eighty-six cards 
in a pack, besides the extra card called the 
“joker.” These packs had four sets, or “suits”: 
hearts, bells, leaves, and acorns. Later, the 
suits became swords, batons, cups, and money. 
It was about 400 years ago, in France, that the 
suits which we have today were invented: 
namely, hearts, clubs, spades, and diamonds. 
In the card pack used today there are fifty-two 
cards, not counting the “joker.” This makes 
thirteen cards of each suit. Hearts and dia¬ 
monds are red; spades and clubs are black. 
Each suit of cards is numbered from one to 
ten, and then there are three picture cards: the 
king, the queen, and the jack. Number one 
of each suit is the ace, and is the highest of all 
the numbered cards. That is why we say that 
a person who stands at the top of the list is 
an ace. 

Last of all, we must not forget the theater. 


Have cards 
changed? 


88 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


Is the theater 
a new 

amusement? 


It is one of the most important of our forms of 
amusement. We still call the shows that we 
see in the theater plays . 

Theaters, too, have a long history. The 
ancient Greeks, more than two thousand years 
ago, used to build great outdoor theaters, set 
in steep hillsides, with seats for thousands of 
people. In these theaters wonderful plays were 
performed. The Romans, too, had their great 
outdoor theaters, which would hold huge 
crowds. The Chinese, on the other side of the 
world, have had theaters for hundreds of years. 

In the theater the actors, by their talking 
and acting, tell us stories of things that have 
happened or that might have happened in the 
real world. When the stories are sad, they are 
called tragedies ; when they are gay, they are 
called comedies . “Play-going” has always been 
one of man’s favorite pastimes. Often there 
is dancing and music along with the play. 
Everybody likes to see plays, because they 
show us the joys and sorrows of people like 
ourselves. Good plays refresh our minds when 


THE CUSTOM OF PLAY 


89 


we are tired, and they make us forget the 
troubles we meet in everyday life. 

A special kind of play, in which the words 
are all sung to the music of an orchestra, is 
called grand opera . That is a very lovely thing. 
Those who take part in it are wonderful singers, 
and people are willing to pay high prices to 
be present at a performance. 

Of course, there are many other forms of 
the custom of play which we have not had 
time to mention. But we can see that play 
is an important part of our lives today, and 
that it does much to make the world brighter 
and more enjoyable for us. 


What is 
an opera? 


Chapter VII 


Are all 

customs good? 

SOME BAD CUSTOMS 

USTOMS we have talked about so far 
have been more good than bad. They 
might have seemed like bad customs to the 
people who did not use them, but they seemed 
to be good customs to the people who did 
use them. 

There are some customs that were really bad. 
Most of them are no longer used. As soon as 
people began to think about them and to 
see that they were not good customs, they were 
slowly dropped from use. Some bad customs, 
however, have lasted for hundreds of years. 
We cannot guess how long it will be before 
these bad customs will come to a place where 
people will know they are bad. It may be a 
long, long time. The bad customs, as well 
as the good ones, have been used so much and 


90 


SOME BAD CUSTOMS 


91 


so long that they have become a habit. We 
do not think much about the things we do just 
from habit. 

Let us see what some of the bad customs are. 

First of all there are the customs that have 
made people waste property. To waste prop¬ 
erty is to destroy it when it is not necessary. 
One of the religious customs we read about 
is the frequent one of burying property with 
dead people. This was a bad custom. Sup¬ 
pose a savage had spent a long time mak¬ 
ing a bow and arrows, a spear and an ax. 
When he died the tools would be buried with 
him. His sons, brothers, or friends would 
have to spend hours, even days and weeks, mak¬ 
ing tools just like the ones that had been de¬ 
stroyed or buried. A good bow, some arrows, 
a spear and an ax were simply wasted. To 
early men these were really too valuable to lose. 
It was a bad custom that made them destroy 
the things they needed. The dead man, of 
course, did not need the bow and arrows, the 
spear, or the ax, but the people at that time 


What had 
customs 
are there? 


92 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


What were 
the pyramids? 



thought he needed them and they would not 
bury him without them. 

You have heard of the great pyramids in 
Egypt. Did you ever think that they were 
built because of a bad custom? The pyramids 
are really large tombs. They are the graves 
built for Egyptian kings who lived thousands 
of years ago. One of the kings having built 
himself a wonderful tomb, other kings tried 
to build bigger and more beautiful tombs for 
themselves, trying to outdo one another. 

It took thousands of slaves many years to 
build one pyramid. Even with all the things 
that engineers know about buildings now and 
with all the modern tools we have it would 
be a hard job to build a pyramid like the ones 
in Egypt. Think how hard it must have been 
for the men who built them. 

Tons and tons of stone were used. Some¬ 
one stood over the slaves with a whip to make 
them work. Many slaves died from overwork 
or were beaten to death because they did not 
please their masters. Year after year they toiled 


All the time and 
effort was wasted 




SOME BAD CUSTOMS 


93 


away, putting the heavy stones into place, build¬ 
ing passageways and deep vaults—and all this 
work for a tomb. All this time and effort 
wasted so that a king, when he died, could be 
buried in a place that was grander than the 
grave of some other king. 

Much that was worth while could have been 
done if those men had put the same amount 
of work and the same number of years into 
something else. Think how many houses could 
have been built, or how many boats, or how 
much food could have been raised, had these 
men been doing other work. 

Another bad custom is one that keeps people 
from eating foods that are plentiful and good. 
Such foods are usually not eaten because they 
are “taboo.” Taboo is a word used for a tribe’s 
feelings about certain things which kept people 
from touching or using them. Taboo means 
“hands off.” Tribal folk usually had a great 
many taboos, but many of them were harmless. 
The taboos that were really bad were the 
taboos on food. Even if people were starving, 


What is 
a taboo? 


94 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


What are 
food taboos? 


they would not touch the food that was taboo. 

Foods usually became taboo because they 
were thought to be holy or sacred. Even now 
there are many food taboos in the world. The 
Hindus will not eat beef, because the cow is a 
sacred animal. To a Hindu, eating beef would 
be like eating one of the gods. 

Every year in India many people die because 
of disease who might get well or who might 
not have been sick if they could have eaten 
proper food and taken medicine. 

There are also taboos on dangerous animals. 
This is a bad custom. In India and Egypt there 
are taboos on crocodiles and cobras. People do 
not dare kill them because they are sacred. 
They think it better to let these animals kill 
someone now and then than to anger the gods 
by killing sacred animals. 

Another bad custom is the system of castes. 
Castes are a kind of steps or classes of society. 
They go from very low classes to very high. 
A person is born into the class to which his 
parents belong and must stay in that class all 


SOME BAD CUSTOMS 


95 


his life. The person in the caste or step just 
above him will have nothing to do with him. 
They do not speak to him and may even pull 
their clothing aside so as not to touch him when 
they pass in the street. No one can marry a 
person who is not in his caste. Nothing can 
be done to change caste. 

Under a system like that, a man who wants 
to be better than he is might as well give up at 
the very beginning. To us it doesn’t seem fair 
that people should be born without any chance 
of climbing higher. This system has been a 
custom for thousands of years in India and in 
some other parts of the world and it has changed 
scarcely any in all that time. 

You know that the Civil War was fought in 
this country to abolish slavery. When the war 
was won by the northern states and the slaves 
were set free, another bad custom was ended. 
There are now only a few places in the world 
where people still own slaves. 

We believe that slavery is a bad custom be¬ 
cause we think it wrong for any man to own 


What is 
caste? 


96 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


Was slavery 
a custom? 


another man as if he were an animal or a piece 
of furniture to be bought or sold at will. 

It was because the northern people and the 
southern people could not agree on the custom 
of slavery that the Civil War had to be fought. 
When the northern states won the war the 
slaves were set free, and there have not been 
any slaves in this country since then. 

It took the southern part of the country many 
years to find out how to raise cotton, sugar, 
and corn without slaves to do the work. There 
are probably a few people in the South now who 
still think that slavery was not necessarily a 
bad custom. 

The Civil War is one thing that shows us 
how important customs are. When people in 
the same group or country cannot agree about 
them and have to go to war to decide whether 
a custom is good or bad, whether they will use 
it or not, then we can be sure that custom is 
a very important part of their lives. 

When we hear of the cruel and bloodthirsty 
sports that have amused people in the past and 


SOME BAD CUSTOMS 


97 


which still amuse them in some countries, we 
realize that here is another bad custom. 

The Romans had some cruel sports. There 
was the custom of gladiators fighting in an 
arena, with great crowds of people in the seats 
of the grandstands to watch them. Sometimes 
the men fought each other. Many times they 
fought wild animals. 

In the early Middle Ages sports were often 
very cruel. It was the custom to torment the 
weak and to watch the helpless struggle. Birds 
were shot and animals were killed in a way to 
make them suffer most. 

A sport enjoyed on holidays was to get to¬ 
gether a number of blind people and shut them 
up in an enclosed place in the town. A pig 
was put in with them for a prize. The blind 
people were to beat the pig with sticks. The 
more the poor blind ones hit each other, the 
funnier the crowd thought it. 

Surely this was a cruel and bad custom. We 
do not hear of such things now. We are all 
taught to help and take care of those who are 


Can sports 
be cruel? 


98 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


What is 
bullfighting? 


not able to take care of themselves. It has be¬ 
come a custom to be kind to those who are 
weaker than we are. 

In Spain and other Spanish countries the 
national amusement is bullfighting. This sport 
means that a bull and a man fight in an 
arena. The bull is angered so that he rushes 
at and tries to gore the fighter with his horns. 
The fighter, who must be very quick, tries to 
escape from the bull until he can injure or 
kill him. Many times the bullfighter is killed 
instead of the bull. 

To an American this seems a very cruel sport 
and a bad custom. To a Spaniard it is a fine 
kind of amusement. The Spaniard will point 
out that the bullfighter does not often get 
killed, and that the sport is not nearly as cruel 
as it used to be. Perhaps this means that peo¬ 
ple’s ideas are changing slowly and that some 
day there will be no more bullfighting even 
in Spain. 


Chapter VIII 


OUR OWN CUSTOMS ARE 
IMPORTANT 

W HEN you were three years old you 
could probably count to four or five, and 
you thought yourself rather clever. By the time 
you were in second or third grade you could 
probably count to one hundred. By then you 
knew that there were many numbers after one 
hundred. Now you know much more about 
numbers, and you have learned that there is 
no end to them. 

Today, even the oldest and wisest men in the 
world—the ones who have studied all their 
lives—cannot tell the age of the earth. They 
have to guess at it. They cannot tell the num¬ 
ber of years that people have been living on the 
earth. They have to guess at that, too. 

Just like them, we do not know how old cus¬ 
toms are. We can only guess that customs are 


How old arc 
customs? 


99 


100 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


Why do 
customs 
last? 


as old as man. The first men on earth prob¬ 
ably began to make customs. Ever since then 
men have been making new customs or chang¬ 
ing the old ones. 

People do not go on using customs year 
after year and century after century unless there 
is some good reason. Why did men make cus¬ 
toms and why did they follow them so closely? 

There is something in every one of us that 
makes us want to be like the other people we 
know. Of course we don’t want to be exactly 
like everybody else, for we all like to feel that 
there is something a little special about our own 
self. But we don’t want to be enough different 
from the others so that they will think us 
strange or funny. 

The reason for this is that none of us would 
be happy living alone. Everyone enjoys being 
liked by other people. He likes to be one of 
the crowd, or one of the gang. You may have 
heard someone say, “Man is a social creature.” 
This means that men and women, boys and 
girls, must live with other people to be happy. 


OUR OWN CUSTOMS ARE IMPORTANT 101 

They must have someone to talk to, to work 
with, and to care for. We might actually die 
of lonesomeness if we had to live quite alone 
for a long time. 

Early men were like that, too. They wanted Why do people 
to belong to the crowd because it was pleasanter stay t0 2 ether? 
to live with others. It was also easier, for two 
or three men could do things in hunting or 
building that one man could not do alone. It 
was safer, too, to live in groups, families and 
tribes, than to live alone. 

It was very important to early man that he 
should be a member of the tribe and not be 
turned out to live by himself. For that reason 
he was willing and eager to follow the cus¬ 
toms his tribe had made. If the tribe said that 
a young man might marry only girls from a 
certain other tribe, he would be careful to pick 
his wife in the usual way. He was risking his 
life if he did not follow the custom. If it 
was the custom for the women to do the hard 
work, then every girl and woman worked 
hard. They had to have someone to hunt food 


They wanted to 
belong to the 
crowd 



102 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


Why did 
people follow 
the customs? 


for them, and someone who could protect them 
from dangerous animals. No woman could 
take the risk of refusing to work, because it 
would mean that she would be killed or turned 
out of her husband’s cave and banished from 
the tribe. 

If it was the custom to have painful tattooing 
on the arms and faces of the men, every boy 
would want to be tattooed as soon as he was old 
enough. The pain might be dreadful, but the 
boy could not let the other boys and men think 
he was a coward. Besides, he wanted to look 
as much like the other men of his tribe as he 
could, so that he would feel like one of them. 

If any trouble came to a tribe, the members 
were apt to blame it on any person in the tribe 
who had not been doing things just like all the 
rest. Storms, they thought, were caused by the 
anger of the gods at someone who had not 
prayed, or who had not made food offerings, 
or who had killed a taboo animal. In order 
to stop the storm the person who had broken 
the custom was punished, sometimes by death. 


OUR OWN CUSTOMS ARE IMPORTANT 103 


It was really very dangerous for a savage not 
to follow the customs of his people. 

The early people, having made their cus¬ 
toms, were bound to follow them. No one 
dared to be different. 

It seems to us that such people were tied 
hand and foot with customs. Yet we have just 
as many customs today. Instead of making life 
harder for us they usually make it easier. 

How do we learn our customs? There seem 
to be almost too many to learn. 

The truth is that we start learning them 
when babies and never stop learning as long 
as we live. 

The first things we learn, we learn from our 
parents and from other members of our fam¬ 
ily. For some time a baby’s whole world is 
made up of his own home and the people in it. 
It is not until we go to school that we begin 
to learn much from outside people. Until that 
time our fathers, mothers, and older brothers 
and sisters have taught us almost everything 
we know. 


Do customs 
ma\e life 
harder? 


104 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


How are 
most things 
learned at first? 


All babies and children learn a great deal 
more by watching and listening to their parents 
than they ever learn by someone’s saying, “This 
is the way to do this.” Children imitate every¬ 
thing they see or hear. They learn how to talk, 
how to play, how to eat, how to wash and dress, 
by seeing how other persons do those things. 
They learn selfishness or unselfishness that way. 
That is the way they learn what to like and 
what not to like. Most of the time when we 
find young children who say, “I don’t like spin¬ 
ach” or “I don’t like carrots,” it is because they 
have heard someone else say it or have seen 
some older brother or sister refuse to eat spinach 
or carrots. If ever since a child can remember, 
everybody in his family has eaten spinach, the 
child will not even think whether or not he 
should like it. He will eat it like everyone else. 
He has learned to do what other people do. 

Most boys want to grow up to be a man like 
father. Nearly every girl thinks it would be 
fine to be just like mother. It is right for them 
to feel that way. Their parents have fed them, 





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106 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


What do we 
learn from 
others? 


clothed them, and made them comfortable. 
They have loved them, too, and helped them 
to learn. It is right for children to look up to 
their parents as people to imitate. 

At first we do exactly as the members of 
our family do. We are learning customs from 
them. Later we go to school. Then we start 
learning from a great many people. We learn 
from our teachers, of course, but we also learn 
from everyone who is going to school with us. 
Until now we have just been a member of a 
family. Now we are a member of a class and 
of a school. 

Even two children who are five years old 
and just starting to kindergarten can learn 
things from each other. First, each one learns 
that here is someone who does not have to give 
him food or toys, and who does not have to 
love him. If he wants the other child to like 
him and play with him, he will have to share 
his toys and otherwise treat him kindly. Each 
child will find that if he is not friendly to the 
other children in the kindergarten class, he 


OUR OWN CUSTOMS ARE IMPORTANT 107 


will be left alone. No one will play games 
with him. No one will want to sit beside him 
in class. The other children may call him 
names. He will not be happy. In other words, 
he has not yet learned to live with other people 
and to do the things that other people expect 
him to do. This is an important lesson that is 
not in books, but that most of us learn while 
we are very young. Those who do not learn 
it usually spend unhappy lives, because they 
have to live very much alone. 

As we grow older we learn more and more 
from persons our own age. We learn customs 
in games and sports, in dress, and in conduct. 
We learn what kind of person to admire. We 
learn what to believe and what not to believe. 
And again and again we learn that if we do 
not want to be left out we must do the things 
that our friends are doing and believe the 
things that they are believing. 

Another way we learn customs is by reading 
history, stories, and poems. History tells us 
about the men and women of other times and 


What happens 
when our 
customs are 
not followed? 


There are important 
lessons not in booths 







108 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


Can we \eep 
from learning 
customs? 


about their customs. Many of these customs 
we are still using. Some of the people in his¬ 
tory are fine examples for us to follow. Almost 
every boy who reads about Abraham Lincoln 
wishes that he might be a man like him. Even 
the make-believe stories and poems that we read 
tell us about people who are so fine we would 
like to imitate them or so bad that we hope 
never to be like them. 

With all these ways of learning customs we 
could not keep from learning them if we tried. 
If in some way we could avoid learning cus¬ 
toms, we would not be able to live happily with 
the people we know. We could not understand 
them. Much of the time we would not know 
what they were talking about. 

In order to live in a world with other people 
we have to know what the customs of the peo¬ 
ple are. We never stop learning, because cus¬ 
toms are always changing. We are always 
meeting new people, too, and becoming mem¬ 
bers of new classes and new groups. Every 
time we get to know someone outside our own 


OUR OWN CUSTOMS ARE IMPORTANT 109 


“crowd” or “set” and he introduces us to the 
people in his “set,” we learn new customs in 
conduct and ideas. If we want to become a 
member of this new set we will have to learn 
its customs and use them. 

It may seem to you that everything is so 
mixed up with customs that we would all have 
a hard time ever doing anything right. This 
is not true, because customs have usually shown 
the easiest and best way of doing things. Hav¬ 
ing customs really makes it easier for us to live 
and understand each other. They keep us from 
getting tangled up a hundred times a day and 
getting into all kinds of trouble. 

Do you realize that telling time by a clock 
is a custom? Suppose, with all the other in¬ 
ventions we have to make living easier, no one 
had invented a clock or an accurate way of 
telling time. 

“Lunch will be ready when the sun is over¬ 
head,” your mother might say. How many 
members of your family would get to the lunch¬ 
eon table at the same time? 


How do 
customs ma\e 
life easy? 


110 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


Would life be 
safe without 
customs? 


What would our lives be like if we did not 
have some of our customs and laws? We are 
sure that we would not have much fun. Would 
you like to think that because you had angered 
someone he was free to kill you? Can you 
think how disagreeable and dangerous it would 
be to go about if there were no traffic laws? 
What if automobiles and wagons did not have 
to be driven on the right side of the street, but 
could go on either side in either direction? 
Would your life be very safe? 

Do fire departments and police departments 
make things any safer for you? Suppose there 
were no parks in the city for children to play 
in, and no beaches where they might bathe, pro¬ 
tected by life-guards. Suppose there were no 
schools and no one to help us find the things 
we want to learn. What if each one of us had 
to find for himself some way of earning food 
and clothes? 

Your family sits down at a table quietly and 
is served with food. Would you like it if each 
one of you had to grab what you could get and 


OUR OWN CUSTOMS ARE IMPORTANT 111 


gulp it down for fear you wouldn’t get enough 
to eat? Suppose there was no custom saying 
that the weak and small should not be attacked 
or tormented. Do you know what you would 
suffer? 

What if work were not honorable and no one 
worked any more than he had to? Would we 
have all the things we enjoy now, like whole¬ 
some food, good clothes, comfortable homes, 
and pleasant ways to entertain ourselves? 

Customs are not just things that someone 
says we must do. They are not to keep us 
from doing the things we want to do. They 
actually help us and we follow them because 
the people with whom we live have brought us 
up to believe they are good. 

We do not need to feel helpless when we 
think of the great number of customs surround¬ 
ing us. If a custom is good, it is better to fol¬ 
low it. If a custom is bad for us, we all have 
a chance to help change it. At first the person 
who tries to change a custom will be looked 
down upon by other people. They may even 


Can we 
change bad 
customs? 


112 


MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 


Are there more 
good than bad 
customs? 


think he is wicked or crazy. But if he is right, 
and the custom is bad, there will soon be others 
who will come to think as he does. Slowly 
the custom will change. 

It should make us all feel better, surrounded 
as we are by customs, to know that since the 
beginning of the world there have been many 
more good customs than bad ones. The bad 
customs sooner or later are changed or stop 
being customs. The good customs go on and 
on, always making it easier for us to live and 
learn and be happy, and to make the most out 
of life. 







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